The northern mole vole (Ellobius talpinus) is a species of rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

 in the family Cricetidae

Cricetidae

The Cricetidae are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. It includes true hamsters, voles, lemmings, and New World rats and mice...

.
It is distributed over large parts of Eastern Europe and Asia.

Distribution

This vole is found in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, the southern parts of Russia, western Siberia, northern Afghanistan, Mongolia and northern China.

Morphology

Northern mole voles are small mammals about 130 millimetres long with a short tail, weighing up to seventy grams. The females are slightly larger than the males. The body is wedge-shaped, the head flat, the neck short and the musculature of the fore-limbs strongly developed. They have short dense brownish fur somewhat paler on the underparts. The feet are naked and pink. They are adapted to life underground, digging their burrows with the help of their large incisors.

Biology

The northern mole vole is diurnal and active all day. There is a decrease in activity during periods of drought and in the winter but there is no true hibernation period. A study undertaken in 2001 found that the vole's adaptation to the extremes of the continental climate is based on distinct seasonal variations of thermoregulation

Thermoregulation

Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different...

. The gestation period lasts three weeks and there may be three or four litters a year, with two to four young voles in each. These grow rapidly and are sexually mature at the age of six weeks.

Ecology

This vole is a colonial species, living in groups of about ten individuals, typically a family group of one pair of adults and young animals from one or two litters. The burrows are complex, the entrances are usually sealed by soil and the nesting chambers and fodder chambers are usually about four metres beneath the surface. The animals feed on roots, bulbs, tuber

Tuber

Tubers are various types of modified plant structures that are enlarged to store nutrients. They are used by plants to survive the winter or dry months and provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing season and they are a means of asexual reproduction...

s and the juicy rhizome

Rhizome

In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...

s of plants, and in the summer and autumn they store small stocks of food. They seldom emerge onto the surface except to distribute soil excavated from the burrow or to move to new territories, at which times they can cover distances of up to 800 metres. The population size varies being limited by infectious diseases, parasites, severe winters with deep-frozen ground, spring flooding of burrows by melt water and predatory birds and mammals.